“Top” Ten Losses of 2024: Kenneth Cope (#2)
By Four Walls
@FourWalls (70565)
United States
January 30, 2025 9:10am CST
For the penultimate person highlighted in the losses of 2024, I might have to turn to @Orson_Kart for help, because he’s probably one of the few people here who might know the name. Running back to a teenage school girl crush, here’s the next person on the list.
#2: Kenneth Cope
This wasn’t a major British actor, even in England, so how did I find out about him? Well, in 1974 an “independent” TV station in Orlando showed things that independent TV stations did, which included bad movies and old TV shows, many of which came from England’s ITC Productions. Some of those shows are legendary in America, including The Saint and The Prisoner. Others were one series (season) and done.
That included a series known here as My Partner the Ghost. It was about a pair of private detectives, one of whom was murdered because he was too good at his job and started finding suspicious things in a case. His ghost went to his partner in the agency to ask him to solve the murder. I started thinking about it in the late 90s and discovered something: the name of the show was NOT My Partner the Ghost. It was Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). They changed the title because they didn’t think American audiences would comprehend the title. (Actually, not a bad move, considering the confused looks and comments I’ve received when mentioning the title.)
That was Kenneth Cope’s biggest splash, but not his only. He was a member of the British comedy show That Was the Week That Was, which even made it to America (keeping David Frost but otherwise using American comedians/actors/writers). He was on the classic soap opera Coronation Street in the early 60s (where he met his wife, actress Renny Lister…they were married for 63 years). (Later in his career he was in another soap, Brookside.) He made movies (including two in the Carry On series), appeared in a Doctor Who episode, wrote books, and fathered three talented kids: Martha, his daughter, is an actress; and his sons, Nick and Mark, were the nucleus of the 90s band the Candyskins.
Oh, and he even recorded a song, “Hands Off, Stop Mucking About,” which was bad enough to end up on the Golden Throats collection of good British actors singing badly.
Cope lived a rich, full life, dying at the age of 93. it’s another part of my teenage life gone.
Kenneth Cope
Born Kenneth Charles Cope, April 14, 1931, Liverpool, Lancashire
Died September 11, 2024, Southport, Merseyside (natural causes) (age 93)
This is a clip from my favorite Randall and Hopkirk episode, “A Disturbing Case,” where Marty (Cope) has to impersonate the doctor who’s hypnotized Jeff (Mike Pratt, who co-wrote the episode):
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3 responses
@FourWalls (70565)
• United States
5h
Make sure you find the original 1969 version. The 2000 version had infinitely better special effects but really stunk as a reboot (although the second season was better).
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